Legal Restrictions and Judicial Authority

The Constitution denies to Congress the right to create titles of nobility or to allow any citizen the right to a foreign title of nobility. Yet, perhaps to gain the respect due their calling, judges, unlike any other office holders, are permitted to adorn themselves with black robes and conduct their trials in court houses of stately grandeur.

These judges are indeed of a different pattern then other public servants. These judges are looked upon in virtual reverence and their judgments are added to those great volumes of decisions that make up our legal if not moral heritage.

Potential Consequences of Judicial Power

But what would be the consequences to our ordered society if judges found not the constraints of an ordered rule of law, but found instead that they had instead the ability to and passion to formulate the law without reference to peoples will? Such jurists could with such power become tyrants of an entirely different order.